I just bought a pair of shoes. I know, no big deal, every­one loves shoes. Except me. I like shoes but they are obvi­ously not my rai­son d’etre. Yet it was the rea­son that I bought them that struck me as inter­est­ing: they worked bril­liantly with the two new pieces of Native Amer­i­can jew­elry that I just added to my col­lec­tion. These were brown wood plat­form san­dals by Isabella Fiore with the loveli­est shade of turquoise leather on top. The minute I saw them I just knew that with a great white sum­mer dress or skirt, my new san­dals and jew­elry, the look would be fin­ished, ele­gant and best of all, easy.

Now I don’t always go for match­ing my acces­sories to my jew­elry, in fact, all that coor­di­nat­ing can be rather dat­ing in many instances. Think Great Aunt Betty with her trade­mark gold ear­rings and match­ing neck­lace. Did you ever recall her look­ing any­thing other than matronly? While there are women who can pull off this look with­out appear­ing older than they actu­ally are, it takes a cer­tain finesse to do that and a body type very dif­fer­ent than my own (ie, stat­uesque). Instead, I think it’s more about tak­ing your jew­elry, shoes, and hand­bag and think­ing about them as a com­plete com­po­si­tion rather than three sep­a­rate enti­ties. First ask your­self, do the col­ors work? And then con­sider shape and size because you want to vary them; if each ele­ment looks the same all you are doing is repeat­ing your­self three times, which is com­pletely uninteresting.

If you aren’t sure that all the pieces fit the puz­zle and don’t have the time or don’t want to think about it, keep your choices clean and suc­cinct, that will feel like short­hand chic. And let’s be hon­est, in the sum­mer when it gets hot and sticky, no one really wants to fuss.